Darwin’s Finch:
You left out my personal favorite, the Oxygen Holocaust. Which, I might add, wasn’t caused by an asteroid or geological bad luck, but by one of the species living here.
Your analogy is flawed-because if I am going into a restaurant and exposing MYSELF to e coli, I, and I alone, am responsible for what happens to me. I make that choice myself.
Kitty, however, does NOT get to make that choice for herself. If someone else exposes me to a foolish risk because of their own moral beliefs, then I will be angry. If I do it to myself, I have no right to be.
Good GOD ALMIGHTY
My advice-don’t get a flipping cat. Cats are carnivores. Cats are also hunters, and in my experience, brutal, cruel and viscious ones at that. I don’t like it when I see cats killing mice, or birds. I cry and I feel bad for the mouse, or the bird. (My cats, however, are kept inside, so the point is moot.). BUT, I do not blame the cat, because that is what Kitty is supposed to do. She’s supposed to kill these animals. She is a killer. Cats are very cruel to their prey-they play with them, and torture them and kill them slowly.
So if you don’t like seeing that happen, Don’t. Get. A. Cat.
:mad:
Dammit, would a mod please fix my coding? Thanks.
finding Buffy, the viscious killer and giving her a hug
Dalmuti:
Why do you claim you don’t have an agenda? There’s nothing wrong with having an agenda. I have an agenda, I like to promote science and a scientific world view. You would like to have people stop killing animals and eating them. Nothing wrong with that agenda. My point was to get you to examine your premises, get you to understand WHY you want people to stop eating animals.
Your ecological arguments have some merit. But, in my opinion they are merely window dressing. They are ways for you to convince people to eat less meat, but they aren’t the reason YOU believe people should kill and eat animals. You believe killing and eating animals is morally wrong…not that it isn’t the most efficient way of feeding the human population and preserving the ecosystem. No, you believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with eating animals.
That is a valid moral viewpoint. One that many people don’t share, but so what? The thing is, you should argue from your REAL reasons. Example: Ever hear anti-abortion activists claim that women who have abortions have greater than normal ovarian cancer rates? Doesn’t matter whether it is true or not, it doesn’t matter. NOBODY becomes an anti-abortion activist for this reason. People do it because they are morally convinced that abortion is wrong. In my opinion, they would do a lot better if they explained how and why they arrived at that conclusion.
The other problem is that you are acting like this is the first time anyone has ever heard any arguments for vegetarianism, and that we are just dismissing it out of hand. After all, if we really listened to your arguments we would be forced through sheer logic to agree with you. But what makes you think that everyone around you has been going through life without ever thinking about the ethics, ecology, and economics of their diet? Many people don’t, but especially on this message board many people do.
Listen, some arguments make sense. Yes, much meat is produced in unecological ways. That doesn’t make eating meat wrong. Feeding grain to animals and then eating the animals is wasteful. Sure, but many animals are ranged on lands that are unsuitable for agriculture and consume plants that humans cannot. Many people eat more meat than is healthy for them. True, but that doesn’t mean that NO meat is the healthiest diet. These aren’t arguments against eating meat. I’ve raised chickens and sheep on feed inedible to humans (grass and bugs), then killed and butchered them, then ate them, the meat making up a very small portion of my diet.
That answers all your practical objections to eating meat, but I still have the suspicion that you wouldn’t do the same thing yourself. And why? Because you are against killing animals, it is morally repulsive to you. So all these arguments are just a side-show.
You are arguing under a handicap, since you aren’t arguing from your heart. The trouble is that most people won’t accept your moral arguments, and you can’t accept that, so you have to trot out all these irrelevancies. Just like the Christian who can’t understand how an atheist isn’t instantly converted after being witnessed to, you can’t understand how someone could be untroubled by the idea of killing animals and eating them.
Here’s how I would have put your original question if I were you. “I am a vegetarian. I am morally convinced that eating animals is wrong. And I can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t see things the way I do. It seems to me that anyone presented with the facts would also become a vegetarian. What am I missing here? Why do you all find it morally acceptable to eat animals?”
Put that way, some of your unexamined premises become more clearly exposed. It’s not that you personally don’t want to eat animals, you are convinced that no one should eat animals (perhaps barring people in survival situations). It isn’t about the ecology, it is about humanity and animality.
the_great_dalmuti, I beg you to reconsider getting a cat. Humans are omnivores, with careful consideration to their dietry intake, they are theoretically able to gain all the nutrients they need from a vegetarian diet. Cats are carnivores, designed to only eat meat, not vegetable matter, and to force them to live 15 years or more eating an unnatural diet is cruelty on a level that I cannot comprehend. If you want a vegetarian pet, get yourself a parrot or a cute little bunny rabbit. Don’t subject a carnivore to a life fighting nature.
Well, that explains the secret cow level in Diablo II
With any luck, the cat’ll eat HIM.
Let us remember the very first line in this thread:
Not trying to start a fight, I’m just genuinely curious.
Right. Like the nice evangelists are just curious about why I want to go to hell. Dalmuti, you’re a True Believer, as evidenced by your assertion that humans eating meat is the worst thing that’s ever happened to, on or near this planet. You’re not going to convince us, especially since you were disingenuous from the get-go. Just for that, I’m going to go to my freezer right now and microwave up a nice chicken cordon bleu. You know why I like that so much? Because two different animals had to die, and another one had to be exploited.
And I’m doing it just because you pissed me off.
OP asks:
How good it tastes, if it’s good, or annoyed resentments if it’s full of fat and gristle and/or hasn’t good taste.
I think it would be rather cruel to eat them without killing them first.
Not at all. I think predation is moral but imprisonment of livestock in horrible little cages or otherwise subjecting them to ill treatment while they are alive is immoral. Generally speaking, I’m most comfortable eating meat acquired through hunting, with “organic” “free range” (i.e., not raised in tiny coops and less likely to have been injected with various hormones and antibiotics) packaged meat next and undifferentiated meat a distant third. I have to admit it isn’t a major moral priority, though. Most of our food animals are pretty fucking stupid, although I do feel sorry for mistreaten pigs.
See above.
Okay, okay, okay. Everyone’s up in arms about me potentially getting a cat and raising it with a vegetarian diet. “Cat’s are naturally carnivores,” you say, and it would be cruel to deny it meat.
Well, lets take a look at your precious hamburgers. Cows, as we all know, are grazing animals, and naturally herbivores. Let’s take a look at some of the crap (literally) they are fed in farming factories. Then, you think about it for a little while, and try to remake the claim that I would be more cruel by raising a vegetarian cat, than someone else who would choose to pay for the raising and slaughtering of a factory-farm cow.
“Current FDA regulations allow dead pigs and dead horses into cattle feed, along with dead poultry. The regulations not only allow cattle to be fed dead poulty, they allow poultry to be fed dead cattle. American who spent more than six months in the UK during the 1980s are now forbidden to donate blood, in order to prevent the spread of BSE [Mad Cow Disease]'s human varient. But cattle blood is still being put into the feed givern to Amercian cattle.” - Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 2001
" . . .cattle byproducts were being used in cattle feed and the American beef industry, in turning the cow, a natural herbivore - into a cannibal." - John Robbins, The Food Revolution, 2001
“Recycled chicken manure is, for example, is repeatedly incorporated into the diets of US chickens . . .By the same token, raw poultry and pig manure are routinely fed to US pigs. And the water they are given is often only liquid wastes draining from manure pits. Meanwhile, dried poultry waste and sewage sludge are routinely fed to US cattle.” - Peter Cheeke, Contemporary Issues in Animal Agriculture, 2nd. ed, 1999
Okay. Nw what where you people saying about me being cruel for wanting to raise a vegetarian cat?
AHunter3 -
Thank you. A straight, honest answer, with little to no name-calling, sarcasm, or rudeness.
I agree that there’s lot of room for the “organic” and “cage free” industries to flourish. It’s only a matter of time, I’d like to belive, because people like you, even though you feel that animals are “pretty fucking stupid,” you also recognize the fact that “imprisonment of livestock in horrible little cages or otherwise subjecting them to ill treatment while they are alive is immoral.”
I agree. If you want meat, go out and hunt it. That’s about as natural you can get. Walking into a McDonalds, that has walls decorated with pictures of hambugers growing on trees, and order a factory produced, chalk-full of hormores, antibiotics, and fecal matter, is about as unnatural as you can get.
“Don’t attribute every qualm you feel to a breakdown of your constitution through want of meat.”
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, and being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod.” - George Bernard Shaw
You flatter yourself. This is behaviour typical of one-trick-pony posters. They start out with a position they view as morally inassailable and view challenges as an attempt to silence or threaten them. If you do get a cat, I just hope it eventually runs away from you and finds a better home. I love cats, in all their predatory glory, and I routinely cheer for big cats on nature shows when they’re chasing those lousy know-it-all impalas.
As for your list of meat industry practices, I’m reminded of a Simpsons bit (actually, nearly everything reminds me of a Simpsons bit, mmHEY):
So you unconvered all kinds of ickiness, did you? Congratulations. By the way, don’t ever go near a doctor. They do all kinds of gross stuff! Cutting people open and whatnot.
Grossness doesn’t make for too cogent an argument.
Now, if you had started with the expenditures in land and water necessary to produce beef for consumption and done some math about increasing standards of living around the world (and the increased demand for meat this would entail), we might have had a good Great Debate about whether or not in 50 years it will even be possible to keep eating meat at current levels. As it stands, you started with a sneer and an assumption of moral superiority, so it’s no wonder you’ve earned contradiction and ridicule.
Of course, in my book, anyone who states or implies that humanity is inherently evil has no business using a computer or any other man-made tool more sophisticated than a wooden club, but that’s just me.
P.S. I’m eating chicken wings as I type this. And I let my cat out before starting because I didn’t want him bugging me for scraps.
Bryan -
I hope you’re enjoying your chicken wings. But, it’s terrbily unhelpful when I’m trying to strir up a discussion, an imoirtant one, at that, and people just sit around name calling, and telling me that they’re going to eat meat just to spite me. That’s great. That’s really pushing your intellect to new heights.
I presented detailed, cited facts, which you can in ro way rebuke, and you simply proceed to mock me, because you have nothing else usefull or intelligent to say. That’s good.
and yes, I could have started the debate differently, as 5 or 6 other people have stated. But, there’s no way I could have started it in such a way that it would have satisfied all of you defensive-as-hell omnivores.
Yes. Eating things that eat fecal matter is icky. Your comparison to doctors makes no sense whatsoever. You’re stuck, out-cited, and grasping at anything you can. No unlike, let me add, a pig in a pork factory.
You mean like plants?
Yes. (Sigh.) I mean like plants.
I can see the headlines. “Beware of Mad Cauliflower Disease.” “Ourbreak of Kernal and Husk Disease runs rampant in the EU!”
Do you really want to try and prove that plants “eat?” Yes they absorb minerals and water, but they don’t have stomachs, as you all know.
Also, here’s a basic lesson is toxicology. When you eat a plant, you ingest all of the toxins that that plant has itself absorbed from soil, air, and water.
Using the same logic, if you ate a dead cow, which ate a mixture of grain, animal scraps, animal waste, and animal blood, you would be consuming not only the toxins of the original cow, but also the store of toxins that that the cow itself inherited from the plants, filth, carcases, blood and waste.
There’s a huge, huge difference. If you can’t see that, I’m sorry.
And besides, organic farming standards don’t allow for the direct application of fresh manure to topsoil.
So yes, my diet contains drastically less amounts of poo than yours. Which is neither bad nor good, in the big picture. I think it’s good for me, but that’s besides the point.
Can’t see the difference between plants and animals? You mean that there are different categories of living things? Like maybe animals and humans, and therefore our morality doesn’t necessarily apply the same way?
Face it, Dalmuti. You’re not going to change anyone’s mind. You made the decision to act all innocent when you started the thread, and now you’re being all indignant that no one’s listening to you after you pulled your bait and switch act. Sorry.
A pig in a pork factory regularly gets out-cited in debates?
Feel free to answer any or all of the questions below, the_great_dalmuti They’re in no particular order. I’m just curious.
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Why is it that when someone mentions that they’re eating meat, they’re mocking you and not taking the debate seriously, but when you compare the extinction of cows without human intervention to The Matrix you’re being witty and not just pointedly avoiding a key issue?
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Are all of your fruits organically grown? Do you eat the ones with worm and bug holes in them?
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Do you use any pesticides or cleaning materials in your house? What would you do if an ant colony marched across your front hallway?
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If you care so much about animals, why would you choose to harm a cat? I don’t want to hear “because cow slaughtering is worse…” Why would you choose to harm a cat?
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Are free range animals raised specifically for their owner’s consumption bad?
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Is hunting for food bad?
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If you were given proof that plants felt pain when they died, would your attitude change? Realize that I’m merely asking “if” here.
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If everyone in America stopped eating meat tomorrow, what wildlife would you choose to destroy in order to cultivate the farmland necessary to sustain our newfound vegetarian lifestyle?
WOW, you’re really flattering yourself now. I eat chicken wings because I likes 'em and I certainly wasn’t thinking of you when I bought them. And I disagree that you’re trying to stir up a discussion. You’re trying to get a moral point across. That’s been pretty blatant from the first posting this thread.
I haven’t rebuked your facts becuase I feel your facts are irrelevant. If you want to try to convince people to make a “moral” decision, then any fact would be irrelevant. If you wanted to argue that meat-eating was unhealthy, then mentioning meat-industry practices would be relevant. You probably wouldn’t win any such argument, but at least that would be a better place for such facts than a blanket statement that meat-eating is morally wrong.
Defensive? I’ll get defensive when you start presenting a respectable offense, not before.
stankow beat me to the punch with that “plants” post, though I’d like to add fungi to the list of things you can no longer eat becuase they’re “icky”. I guess that eliminates all natural food sources. If I were you, I’d stock up on Twinkies.
Neither does your attempt to gross people out. You must think we’re pretty delicate if a rundown of admittedly icky meat-industry practices would be enough to make us rally to your side of the argument. I’m hoping the readers of this board are made of sterner stuff than that.
Now who’s name-calling? Though I’m not actually offended because I don’t take you seriously enough. I can dig up cites by the ton (including Cecil himself) claiming that moderate meat consumption in humans is perfectly natural and healthy. You’re the one claiming it’s immoral and/or dangerous. The onus is on you to provide arguments for that position, if you honestly hope to expand anyone’s horizons.
No need to apologize. All in the name of debate. I started the thread in hope of starting a good discussion. Most of the posts called my personal beliefs into question, and I defended them. That’s it.
I’m not out to change anyone’s mind. I just want people to know the facts before they start calling me cruel for wanting to adopt a cat and feed it vegetarian food.
You said “Like maybe animals and humans, and therefore our morality doesn’t necessarily apply the same way?” That’s interesting. Keep going with it. Give me a cite. Just don’t assume that I’m wrong merely because I’m outnumbered.
I’m not being indignant. I’m looking for someone who will offer up a better debate than “that how me anscestors did it.”
How about this: do you think at all that society should be more vigialant in its tolerance of factory farming, due to the fact that there may the slight possibility of being able to compare the treatment of the animals in today’s slaughterhouses to the atrocities of both the Nazi and Japanese in their so called “medical research” on Jewish and Korean people?
And here’s a basic lesson in anatomy: cows have organs like livers and kidneys, plants don’t. Such organs serve to process, detoxify and/or filter toxins from the blood. So, unless you’ve got cites which specifiy the proportion of ingested toxins which are actually deposted into muscle tissue, I don’t think you can support your logic.